The Binance executive clarified that SBF's degenerative remarks were not behind the CZ’s decision to liquidate Binance's FTT holdings.
Patrick Hilmann, the Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) of leading crypto exchange Binance, alleged that Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the founder and former CEO of the now-defunct rival exchange FTX, consistently criticized Binance’s CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) before FTX’s collapse, a behavior Hilmann referred to as “shading.”
SBF Constantly Shaded CZ
A great read by @WilliamCohan at @PuckNews. One thing they missed, Sam was CONSTANTLY spreading fake rumors about @cz_binance, because shading him as an “evil Chinese” was critical to his scam. You can’t pretend to be Luke Skywalker without Darth Vader.https://t.co/oi9JxsqPyz— Patrick Hillmann (@PRHillmann) April 20, 2023
Among other things, Scaramucci mentioned that he had been on a $1 billion fundraising trip with SBF to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the weeks leading up to the FTX saga.
During the trip, SBF met with some officials in Dubai, including the UAE Sovereign wealth fund, and Scaramucci was absent from most of those meetings as he had other businesses to attend to. However, a colleague eventually informed Scaramucci that SBF had been bad-mouthing CZ during those meetings.
A Norm
The Mooch disclosed that SBF’s behavior was worrisome, as politeness was deemed necessary in the corporate world due to the unpredictability of life. Moreover, CZ could easily hear about the degenerating remarks.
“He was lighting CZ up. And these are small towns. They look glitzy from a travel brochure, but trust me, these are small, very connected, interconnected towns. It got back to CZ,” Scaramucci said.